Google hangout which replaced Google Talk first became
relevant back in May when Google announced all the cool features that will be
coming to their new messaging app. It wasn’t till Android 4.4 Kit Kat (October-ish) when
these features like SMS were intergraded. There are a slew of
messaging apps out there but not many of them flow so smoothly with the android
eco-system as well as hangouts.

After you initially set up Google Play Music that’s when
you realize that all other music players are pretty much not needed anymore,
especially if you activate all access. This will let you listen to any song in
Google’s Music Library and integrates them with your own music. Hopefully
google will make a proper desktop app in 2014.

I feel like I grew out of launchers just like I grew out
of changing ROMs every other day… I feel like stock android has gotten to the
point where it looks cool enough to stand alone. Now if your launcher doesn’t have some special
features that the stock one doesn’t have I’m not really interested. GEL has
google now integrated so as long as you are on you’re a home screen all you
have to say is “Okay Google” Google Now will activate. This was introduced with
the Google Nexus 5 but it can be sided loaded with an APK. Hopefully Google
will release this in the Google Play Store. This will also end the annoyance
that people have with the manufacturer skins like HTC Sense and Samsung’s
TouchWhiz.

For most of the year Google’s Play book app was my
favorite eBook reader app but their recent update destroyed the app for most…
Google please fix this. Anyways the Kindle app has been good for years and has
slowly been improving. You cant really go wrong with it…

This was another hard choice for me. So I had to go with
the all-around best. I spent so many hours killing my battery on my Nexus 7
Playing this game. It’s Funny that EA has a favorite anything on my list lol.

Google drive has come a long way since it was first
introduced. It has only become better since Google Docs has been added to it.
They are still a long ways from perfect but it is the best free option out
there.